This invention relates to office equipment. In particular, it is a copystand for use with computer workstations.
Copystands are known. Indeed, it is probable that Egyptian scribes had some type of copystand available to them as they transcribed material from one sheet of papyrus to another. In their most common modern embodiment, copystands are easel-like devices with clips or magnets for holding the text being copied against the stand. Such stands are frequently made from metal (although plastic copy stands are not unknown) and serve their purpose reasonably well.
However, this technology, which originated in dynastic Egypt and was refined in medieval monasteries, is not fully adapted to the modern, computerized office. Frequently, documents are created on a computer, stored on magnetic media such as magnetic disks, and edited by accessing the document from the magnetic media. For purposes of this application, the magnetic media will be assumed to be 31/2" diskettes, herein called disks. Although many people still prefer to edit a printed copy of the document, it is becoming more and more common for a document to be printed only once, after all editing has been completed on computers, using the version of document stored on the disk.
In modern offices, it is also not uncommon for a document to be created on one computer, edited on a second, and printed using a third. Each move requires the exchange of the disk on which the document is stored. At some point, if a draft copy of the document is printed and edited, a computer operator will need to read from the edited copy while effecting the changes on the disk storing the document. This movement of documents and disks can result in the separation of disks from their associated printed document, causing a certain amount of confusion and lost time as a search for the missing item(s) is conducted.
Given this possible confusion, a need exists for a system which will hold and store disks and their related printed documents together, so that the disks will not be easily damaged and will not become separated from the related documents. It will also be helpful if this system did not multiply the number of things requiring space on a computer operator's desk or work area.